# Questions tagged [neutron-star]

Questions regarding a degenerate star that is mainly composed of neutrons.

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### How far away are the events that caused the gravitational waves that have been detected?

A certain number of gravitational wave events have been detected. Is it possible to know how far away the mergers that caused those gravitational wave events are?
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### Is the atmosphere of neutron star solid, liquid or gaseous state? [duplicate]

Neutron star has a thin layer of atmosphere consist mostly of hydrogen and helium and is about less than a metre thick on average, but what wasn't stated in many articles I read is the state of matter ...
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### How does the field decay of a magnetar power the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation?

In Space.com's Dr. Pulsar and Mr. Magnetar? 2 Star Types May Turn into Each Other (and in the linked video) "Tom Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology and a senior ...
164 views

### Can we detect pulsars that aren't “pointed” towards us?

A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of radiation through its magnetic poles, in the direction of the Earth. This makes it seem to pulse, as seen from Earth. There ...
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### How can I hear (or at least detect) a pulsar at home?

Scott Manley's video Using Relativistic Raytracing &X-Rays To See Detail on Surface Of Neutron Star talks about X-ray measurements using the NICER X-ray telescope attached to the International ...
124 views

### If we accelerate a neutron star to move at speeds comparable to light would it become a blackhole because of the added energy?

Could a neutron star turn into a blackhole if it is accelerated to near luminal velocities? And if it slows down after a while, does it become a neutron star again?
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### What is the “radiation sound speed” inside an accretion column?

I was trying to read "A New Two-fluid Radiation-hydrodynamical Model for X-Ray Pulsar Accretion Columns" and its follow-up paper both by West et al. and came across a quantity called "radiation sound ...
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### Neutron star size in different reference frames

What is the estimated size of neutron stars observed in their reference frame and in our reference frame? That is, how bent is space-time around neutron stars?
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### Could anything consume a small black hole?

Whenever I read about black holes, it is normally involving how they devour anything that comes too close... regardless of how big anything is. But what if it were a really small black hole vs ...
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### Neutron star r-process nucleosynthesis

The $r$-process in supernovae happens when a high flux of neutrons irradiates the heaviest abundant nuclei (in the region of iron), resulting in endothermic nuclear reactions. To the extent that at ...
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### Radiation from Neutron Star impact?

As I understand it, objects falling into an old/inactive/dead/non-pulsar neutron star would be ripped apart, form an accretion disc and eventually emit a burst of radiation as they fall onto the ...
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### Is there evidence of super-heavy elements in the x-ray and gamma-ray spectrums of neutron stars?

It occurs to me, that between the surface and interior of neutron stars, gravitational pressure might produce super-heavy elements and that signatures of such elements might be detectable in the star'...
166 views

### A neutron star without a flat surface and an atmosphere?

In the Kurzgesagt video Atoms As Big As Mountains — Neutron Stars Explained they state that neutron stars have an atmosphere that reaches about 10 centimeters above the surface. How is this possible?...
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### Binary pairings that haven't been discovered yet?

Question: Are there any kinds of binary pairings that haven't been discovered yet? Any that are particularly significant, or that might shed some light on binary stellar evolution or theories of ...
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### Roche Zone of a black hole vs Roche Zone of Neutron Star

Suppose a very unusually small back hole with the mass of about, lets say, 1.5 solar masses(hawking radiation should destroy a lot of mass let's assume). It thus would have a Roche limit smaller than ...
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### What does “GPU-accelerated butterfly matched filtering over dense bank of time-symmetric chirp-like templates” mean? (GW170817)

A new analysis of gravitational wave (and other data) from GW170817 on 2017-Aug-17 has been published, strongly suggesting that the merger of two neutron stars resulted in a large, rapidly rotating ...
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### A high-temperature isolated neutron star could be super-Eddington?

If the surface temperature of a young neutron star is hot enough, say, several KeV, its blackbody radiation could be super-Eddington? Did any paper discuss this scenario before?
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### Could an astronomical process create elements in the islands of stability?

I was reading about heavy elements recently, and I took note of the theorized islands of stability, and how some the elements involved are considerably heavier than anything we've been able to ...
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### What is Propeller Effect exactly?

I find the original reference seems to be here. I still do not understand the mechanism. It is necessarily occur in neutron binaries? Anyone can introduce it in detail? This paper is old.
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### How big should be a piece of neutron star to reach Earth's mass?

Imagine a neutron star could be broke into pieces. How big would be the piece matching Earth's mass?
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### Why aren't neutron stars full of dark matter?

Dark matter interacts with the gravitational force right? Well, unlike black holes, neutron stars are actually visible, and they're an enormous gravitational sink, so dark matter should collect to ...
402 views

### Why do neutron stars collide instead of just revolving around each other like planets revolve around the Sun?

We know about events like two neutron star colliding and resulting in a black hole, also collision of black holes, and collision of galaxies. But we never see a satellite such as a moon colliding with ...
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### Is there a possibility that a white dwarf can turn into a neutron star or a black hole?

I know that a white dwarf is mainly balanced by electron degeneracy pressure and that if it gains more than 1.4 solar masses from any source (such as a companion star or a collision), it explodes as a ...
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### Core collapse supernova vs Neutron Star

I am reading about massive stars and their final consequences. what I understood is massive stars after throwing out their outer envelop with masses > 1.4 solar Mass turn into neutron stars. But I ...
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### What is the light that we see from a neutron star come from?

What hold the electrons in orbit? Is it gravity or the atomic attraction between the protons and neutrons? I asked this question on Physics SE I hope I improved on the quality enough to do better ...
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### Can we create neutron star by pressing earth? Or other objects?

Everywhere I can hear, that if we press anything to the right size, we create black hole. Can we create neutron star by pressing, for example, our planet? And what if we press something bigger, like ...
366 views

### How do we know how fast the surface of a neutron star is rotating?

I understand that we can count pulses in time, but how do we know that the magnetosphere is rotating along with the surface of a neutron star? Can we measure the rotation of a neutron star in any ...
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### Could life survive on a planet orbiting a neutron star? [closed]

Suppose an Earth-like planet orbits a neutron star, though specifically not a pulsar. Is there any possible orbit, around any possible neutron star, in which the planet could support human life?
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### Why is neutron star a star?

I am wondering since neutron star is smaller than the average main-sequence stars and it doesn't produce energy via fusion so why do we still call it a star?
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### Did the scientists really observed gold and platinum being created from kilonova?

I read that after LIGO and Virgo interferometers detected gravitational waves signal from a kilonova, many ground based telescopes quickly turns their mirrors towards the spot and "sees" gold and ...
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### Can a Neutron Star become charged?

If you keep adding electrons or protons to a Neutron star, what would happen? Are there decay processes that convert them to neutrons in the absence of the oppositely charged particle?
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### “Who saw” the binary neutron star merger first? What was the sequence of events? (GRB/GW170817)

I'm trying to read Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger the "cast of thousands" OPEN Access ApJ letter 848:L12 (59pp), 2017 October 20 https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa91c9 ...
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### Energy Source for Gamma Rays from Merging Neutron Stars

When the two neutron stars merged in the latest event, large amounts of gamma rays were emitted. Given that their deorbitting is a result of gravitational wave production, where does the energy for ...
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### Which atom is a Neutron star made of?

I understood that everything was made of Atoms. An atom is the smallest constituent unit of ordinary matter that has the properties of a chemical element. Every solid, liquid, gas, and plasma ...
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### Are binary neutron star mergers needed to explain the abundance of gold?

The NPR News item Astronomers Strike Gravitational Gold In Colliding Neutron Stars mentions and quotes "Daniel Kasen, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley:" He ...
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### Why is the discovery of merging neutron stars important?

I'm fairly certain people here will have heard about it, already, but apparently, two supernova leftovers clashed some 130 million years ago and some billion billion kilometres away ... What I haven'...
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### Do neutron stars shine?

Ignore pulsars and the like, just a neutron star in empty space – does it emit light and neutrinos?
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### Neutron star, aging proccess

Is there any information about the future of the neutron star? What I am interested what happens to it as the time passes. Say a billion years. Would it still be a neutron star? Would it collapse to ...
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### Parent stars of our Sun - Where are its remains?

This is in a way related to this question. Question is: Our star is third generation star, which is explained by existing Barium. That Barium was created by other stars. Now, those stars must have ...
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### whose gravitational pull is more stronger , Neutron Star or Black hole?

We know neutron star is very densest in the universe and it weighs the thousand times of our Sun. And Black hole having strong gravitational pull not even light can escape From it . So , whose ...
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### How do we know that Singularity is not an object with reasonable radius?

So for example: a Neutron star has a radius of 10km and 2 solar masses. A singularity can have a radius of 1m and 10 solar masses, with a 1km event horizon radius. Basically it will just be a more ...
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### Why do neutrinos take time to scatter?

After a supernova neutrinos get released by electron capture,and they escape in a flood. My guess is because they have tiny masses and get momentum from momentum conservation. However, the huge ...
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### Shape of neutron stars

I've heard that the more an object spins, the less of a true sphere it is. Using this logic most of neutron stars would be far from spherical,in general what shape are most neutron stars?
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### Magnetars and the Dynamo Effect

How do magnetars create/sustain such strong magnetic fields? If a dynamo effect did create a magnetar, then what creates the magnetic field? The dynamo effect requires an electrically conductive fluid,...
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### Inner Workings of Neutron Stars

What are future steps that can be taken in order to learn more about the inner workings of a Neutron Star such as "nuclear pasta" and the materials in the inner core?
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### Do all neutron stars spin?

I know that some of them are pulsars and pulsars spin very fast, but do all of the neutron stars spin? I would think that they would because of conservation of momentum, but I'm really just not sure.
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### Is there a significant population of neutron stars outside the galactic plane?

Pulsar kicks originating from supernovae can impart neutron stars with speeds of 100-500 km/s, often at or close to the escape velocity of the Milky Way. Even if a pulsar fails to escape the galaxy, ...
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### How could a neutron star cause repeated 'fast radio bursts' detected coming from outside of the galaxy?

According to the ScienceAlert article Mysterious repeating radio signals have been detected coming from outside our galaxy, based on the Letter to Nature "A repeating fast radio burst", there has been ...